Donald Trump admin revokes termination of legal status of foreign students in US after court challenges

The Donald Trump administration is reversing the termination of legal status for international students across the United States after several of them filed court challenges, federal officials told AP.

The records in a federal student database, maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were terminated in recent weeks. According to the report, judges across the US had already issued orders, temporarily restoring students’ records in dozens of lawsuits challenging the terminations.

More than 1,200 students nationwide suddenly lost their legal status or had visas revoked, leaving them at risk for deportation.

Many said they had only minor infractions on their record or did not know why they were targeted. Some left the country while others have gone into hiding or stopped going to class.

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AP accessed one of the lawsuits filed by a plaintiff that said,“ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations. Until such a policy is issued, the SEVIS records for plaintiff(s) in this case (and other similarly situated plaintiffs) will remain Active or shall be re-activated if not currently active and ICE will not modify the record solely based on the NCIC finding that resulted in the recent SEVIS record termination."

SEVIS is the Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems database that tracks international students’ compliance with their visa status. NCIC stands for National Crime Information Center, a database of criminal justice information maintained by the FBI.

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Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant Homeland Security secretary, told AP that ICE had not reversed course on any visa revocations but did “restore SEVIS access for people who had not had their visa revoked.”

Several colleges said Friday they noticed legal status had already been restored for some of their students, but uncertainty remained.

“It is still unclear whether ICE will restore status to everyone it has targeted and whether the State Department will help students whose visas were wrongly revoked,” Greg Chen of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said.

Brian Green, who is involved in lawsuits on behalf of several dozen students, said that his cases only sought restoration of the student status and that he would be withdrawing them as a result of the statement from ICE.

Oakland lawyers seek nationwide court orders against arresting or incarcerating students

But lawyers in the Oakland case are seeking a nationwide order from the court prohibiting the government from arresting or incarcerating students, transferring them to places outside their district, or preventing them from continuing work or studies.

Pam Johann, a government lawyer, told AP it was premature to consider anything like that, given that ICE was in the process of reactivating records and developing a policy. “We should take a pause while ICE is implementing this change that plaintiffs are seeking right now, on its own,” she said.

But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White asked her to humor the court.

“It seems like with this administration there’s a new world order every single day,” he said. “It’s like whack-a-mole.”

He ordered the government to clarify the new policy.

Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his department was revoking visas held by people acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges. But many students whose status was terminated said they did not fall under those categories.